


Sleep Alone

by myclocksmassive



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: F/M, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:06:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myclocksmassive/pseuds/myclocksmassive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been four years. Brendon still isn't over it because he still hasn't dealt with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep Alone

**Author's Note:**

> 1st person POV from Brendon's perspective.
> 
> Follows general band sequence, except instead of a voluntary split, one member is dead and the other consequently had a breakdown. 
> 
> Involves mentions of suicide and blood.
> 
> Try not to hate me.
> 
> Title taken from the song of the same name by Two Door Cinema Club
> 
> Obviously, these are based off of real people, but I've changed them for my own purposes. I don't know them personally and I don't pretend to know what their lives and thoughts are like.

The fourth anniversary has come and gone, and I still don’t quite feel it. A lot has changed since then. 

Jon’s wedding, which I didn’t attend. Said he couldn’t bear to see me without my shadow. I didn’t take it personally. I hear he’s having a baby. New life. I don’t think much about it. Babies are born every day. The kid will have great parents, and will be blessed if it inherits even half of his dad’s talent. Other than that, it doesn’t cross my mind.

My wedding, which I did attend. I hadn’t been that happy in a long time. It takes a lot to make me smile genuinely these days. I smiled a lot that day, and it was all genuine. Sarah looked beautiful. I felt beautiful. I’m so excited to be spending the rest of my life with her. I couldn’t ask for a better woman to love me. Living with her is easy and beautiful.

Two albums, one out and one waiting to be released. They’re shit. Trash. Complete--I hate everything about them. The music isn’t the same without him. The fans know that of course, but they don’t understand what it’s like on this end. I’m trying. Music is supposed to be what carries me through. It’s just hard, because he once was my muse and now he’s gone. I suppose my muse is floating around somewhere, wherever he is. At least a part of me can be with him.

Four years is such a long time to be without one you love. In that time I have found others to love. Without Ryan, and consequently without Jon, for a while it was just Spencer. He worried for a long time, saying it wasn’t normal to react how I did. He said that most people would cry, at least at first if not later. I didn’t. I haven’t. I can’t feel that way, though I don’t know why. After meeting and befriending Dallon, it just got easier to push the feelings under the joy of making new friends. And I fell in love, and I made music, and I toured, and all the while I just pushed the feelings away. If I didn’t have to feel it, I wasn’t going to.

I fell out of touch with Jon after his institutionalization. I know it was shitty of me, but he gives off just this negative aura and it makes me feel sick. No matter how he looks, I can’t get the sight of his face in that state of panic out of my mind. That fazed me more than the body on the floor. I don’t want to have to remember it anymore.

Spencer is the one that took it best of all of us. Where Jon went out of his mind and I fell into mine, Spencer grieved in a way that was expected. He went through the stages; I’d always thought they were made up, yanno, another way that doctors can try to give a simple explanation for what’s going on in your head. But he did it, and watching it changed my perception of him a little. Not in a bad way or anything. It’s just that as long as I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him so emotional. I can understand it though. He lost his best friend that day.

I could never understand why Jon called him my shadow. But after seeing him surrounding me for four years, knowing it’s never really him and it never will be, I can understand. I mistake peripheral glimpses in mirrors as his reflection and not mine. I pick him out in the crowd in shows. I hear his voice on the phone when I don’t recognize the number. When I’m in the house alone, every noise I hear is him: his footsteps, his faint strumming of a guitar, his laugh, God, his laugh. It’s maddening, and sometimes I call out for him to stop, just to leave me to live my life. But other times I need it, because it’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to holding him again. 

It makes me angry at myself for never showing him that I cared enough. Stolen kisses on stage are one thing. Arms around him are the same. Glances and smiles. It’s all the same, and it’s not enough to make a person stay. I should have given him love and proved it every day, loved him openly and seriously. Truly. Madly. Deeply. I didn’t know it needed to be that way. I was young and stupid, and love wasn’t my concern. I took him for granted. I thought we were at an understanding, that we just dicking around until we grew up a bit, until we were old enough for something more between us.

I never read the note. I knew it would be about me, and if I didn’t read it, if I worked hard enough, I could believe it wasn’t.

I should have been willing to share a hotel room with him like he asked me to. I told him no, and then I told him I wanted space. What I really wanted was the freedom to change up who I was having sex with, even though I ended that night sleeping alone. I could have gone over to his room, but I chose not to, for the sake of my pride.

I let him die thinking we were fighting. And still I didn’t cry.

He didn’t come down to breakfast. We thought he was sleeping in. Spencer and I went back to my room to drink--because it’s never too early when you’re on tour and you have a day off. Jon was volunteered by the two of us to go wake up the sleepyhead so he could join us, because Jon was the one with the spare key, after all. No more moping, I thought. If he had been upset last night, he would have argued with me.

We could hear Jon screaming from where we sat.

I’ve yet to get the sound out of my head.

It wasn’t two days before I started seeing him, feeling him. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts. But I do believe that Ryan’s haunting me somehow.

The worst of it is always when I’m at home, and that’s why I’m thankful to be on tours, on the move, in cities where I never make a permanent stop. Sarah misses me when I’m gone without her, of course, and I miss her too. But if I stay too long, things start getting to me. And it’s always been about avoiding those things.

For no real reason, it’s been worse tonight than it has been for a while. Sarah is away. I’m alone with my thoughts. And Ryan, too, I know he’s here no matter what logic says. I try to ignore him. That’s what I’m best at. Ignoring. Pushing feelings under and away. Out of sight and out of mind. God, it’s been four years and I want him out of sight and out of mind.

The television is on but there’s nothing to watch. The clock’s showing something after midnight, but I don’t feel tired. There’s something wrong with tonight. The way I can’t get comfortable in my seat, or stop flipping through channels, or make the temperature of the room seem right. It was too hot, so I turned up the air conditioning. It got too cold. I fought with it for a long time until I decided I didn’t care, pulling a blanket over my legs and telling myself to deal with it. It’s about then that I wish I had Sarah to cuddle with. Someone to cuddle with.

When the clock chimes the hour, I find myself thinking of all the stupid things that 2 in the morning has seen me doing over the years. That train of thought carries me through high school, through early days in the band, through tours, to Ryan. Ryan, who is never too far out of mind, no matter where I try to put him, to hide him.

It feels like a cheesy movie, one that I would never watch because it got good reviews and all my friends hated it. I feel stupid, but I find myself speaking aloud, as if something was there to hear me. “I don’t want to play like this anymore, Ryan.”

As expected, nothing happens. I can imagine him so clearly, though. If he was alive he’d be tucked under my arm, regardless of the ring on my finger. I could be married for a thousand years and still never get tired of the feeling of him against me. He’s always been so warm, so soft, so good to touch. I still feel empty without him.

Since he’s not alive, though, I picture him standing in corners, watching. I’m not sure what he’s watching for. If I let myself focus on the tv, I believe I can really see him in my peripheral vision. He’s usually dressed in dark colors, reminiscent of the way we found him. Grey pajama bottoms. Black t-shirt. Red forearms. The red was the only thing out of place. I had seen him wear the same outfit countless times, in his bed, in my bed, anywhere I could get my arms around him. The fabric was soft, I remember that. Just like him.

I didn’t touch him then, when there was blood everywhere. I knew I couldn’t handle the way he would feel. Cold, stiff, everything that he wasn’t when he was alive. If I had known this was coming, I would have held him all through that night.

Now, my arms feel empty, but the room feels full of him. I want to sleep, but I can’t, I almost know I’d never be able to close my eyes tonight. I’m afraid of seeing him in dreams, and that fear outweighs the fear of my imagination. In a dream he could touch me, speak to me, manipulate me in ways I could never dream to control. If I keep awake, if I just let the feeling pass, then I’ll be able to avoid it. I just need a distraction. The television is proving worthless.

I’ve long since given up reading. It reminds me too much of Ryan, because the boy always had his nose in one book or another. So it seems my only option is a movie, which means throwing off the blanket, standing up, and walking across the room to get to the shelf where the movies are kept. This means passing windows, picture frames, so many surfaces that insist on reflecting his face. I keep my head down, avoiding the sight of them. I don’t need this now. I don’t need this ever. I need to realize that he’s dead and gone, not following me around my house.

But I know he’s there. I know.

It’s like what they say with love. Once you find the right one, you just know. They never tell you the end of it; when someone you love dies and begins haunting you, you just know that as well.

I pick a movie completely at random. If it’s on the shelf, it’s gotta be something that I like, or we wouldn’t have it. I realize after sitting down and covering up with the blanket again that I need the remote in order to do anything, so I need to move again to fetch it. Navigating through the menu, I manage to get it playing rather quickly. The movie I chose is something slow and quiet, so I hope that as it goes on, this feeling will pass, that Ryan will leave me be, and then I can let myself fall asleep.

Sleep does, in fact, come quickly, despite my previous belief otherwise. I make it through a scene or two and wake later to the sound of the disc menu. The clock says sometime after four, and I reluctantly move off the couch and shut off the movie and the tv, wanting to get to bed. My mind is clear of dead men and lost loves as I cross the house to the empty bedroom. I flick the light on so I can see as I change into pajamas, and, again, I feel like life has become a movie. The lightbulb burns out, but I simply sigh and go on changing anyway. It’s something I’ll fix in the morning, sometime when it isn’t four am, after I get enough sleep to fully think about what’s going on.

The dark brings Ryan back. I can see him in every space I am not looking. He is reflected in the mirror above Sarah’s dresser. My eyes adjust to the dark, but he is still everywhere. In the dark, it honestly becomes a bit terrifying. The man’s been dead for four years. This shouldn’t happen anymore.

“Enough,” I say out loud, my voice sounding inappropriately loud in the silence of the night.

To my surprise, the feeling is alleviated. I feel alone again. The room is empty except for my breathing, my heart beating.

I undress in the silence.


End file.
